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When it started, Patrick Farmer was some kid that came out for winter track in his senior year of high school. He was a soccer player at St. Anthony’s and would have probably taken a scholarship to play at Loyola.

But he had a friend on the girls track team, Olivia Abbate, who kept prodding him to join the track team. She told the boys coach Tim Dearie that he was fast. She told sprint coach Rich Panker the same thing. It’s a familiar story, a kid from one sport that joins the track team because a friend wouldn’t lay off and because, if nothing else, it was something to do.

But most stories don’t end like this. In most of those stories, the kid doesn’t generate a buzz in his first open race like Farmer did. Most kids don’t just show up at the Hispanic Games and win the 400 meters in a then national-leading 48.20 seconds. That was before he even knew what 48.20 meant. Might as well have been the combination to his locker at school.

A week later he set the CHSAA record by winning the 300 meters at the Stanner Games, Jan. 16, in 34.22. It’s the same event where Farmer, who now signed a track scholarship with the University of Virginia, would claim his first state championship.

Farmer’s story caught on like a forest fire. Every time he hit the track there was a buzz in the Armory. People pushed close to the edge of their seat. This kid just started running last month, two months ago, someone would say. And without fail before he took off, someone would get a nudge on the shoulder and the guy next to them would say, “Watch this.”

Week after week Farmer was asked, “Did you expect this? Are you surprised by your success?” Every weekend he said yes and looked shocked that he had even found himself in this position – a rookie soccer convert turned into one of the best sprinters in the country almost as fast as he could run a quarter-mile.

And there was pressure because everyone knew him. Farmer earned the right for spectators to have expectations of him and because Farmer himself was too green to even give himself a time goal he aimed at the one goal that every athlete sets for himself. He wanted to win. Every time out.

Two months into his first track season Farmer found himself lined up against one of the best 300-meter fields ever assembled, so deep that the race had two heats and the winner could have easily come from either.  Farmer saw indoor national 400 champ Brady Gehert (Altoona, Pa.) and sprint dynamo Fuquawn Greene (New Bern, N.C.) in his section along with Sheepshead Bay’s John Thomas who crushed everyone at the start.

Gehert and Greene went after him with Farmer in tow and they all had a shot coming off the curve. That was until Farmer blew up. He knew he’d never run so fast before. Farmer couldn’t maintain the speed and fell at the finish.

But Farmer got up – both literally and figuratively.  This time the pressure wasn’t just his own. He took the baton in the 4x400 at the CHSAA championships in last place and his team needing all six first-place points to give the Friars a chance to tie Fordham Prep for the CHSAA crown.

Last place and 50 meters behind, Farmer snatched the baton and sucked all the air out of the building. With each stride he gobbled chunks of the track and reeled in the leaders like he had packed a fishing rod. Even more amazing is that he controlled the race with 50 meters left.

If no one remembers his background story, they’ll remember that he closed the show at the CHSAA championships with a 46.5 anchor leg. (Fordham Prep scored two points in the 4x200, the last event, to win.)

It took Farmer three months to join the track team, make a splash on the national scene, grab a CHSAA record, an athletic scholarship to Virginia, a state championship and all-American honors, running the 400 leg on St. Anthony’s national champion sprint medley relay.

"I still can’t believe it,” he said.

2010 ARMORY ALL STAR TEAM